Unless people return to work, coronavirus pandemic wins

Sorry folks, but that’s the only model I’m going to reference going forward. Because to our economy, it’s really the only model that matters. The hard truth is this country and its leaders are, once again, following the wrong models.

I do a lot of research online, meaning I click on a lot of stories that interest me. I don’t dismiss stories based on the website of origination because that kind of bias prevents one from learning. What I find in these stories — despite of people on the left asking me constantly “Did you even read the link I sent you?” — are links and references to other stories. Those lead to even more links and facts and information from which I glean conclusions. So, yeah, I spend a lot of time online because that’s how I learn.

But with this coronavirus outbreak, online might be the most dangerous place for one’s mind. Mainly because what’s online now isn’t so much about accurate and new information to learn. It’s basically a jumbled mess of opinions about how everyone else should be living. And
99 percent or more of what’s online about COVID-19 can be traced to one factoid: A model that predicted 2.2 MILLION Americans will die. That’s the very definition of GIGO — garbage in, garbage out — as it relates pandemics. Our leaders should have known better.

Here’s what I’ve learned over the past several months of our government-extended pandemic.

First and foremost, viral outbreaks take on the same characteristics regardless of whether or not they’re novel. It’s actually a very simple set of steps. A virus originates. A virus infects. The infections peak within a month or so, like a hockey stick graph. The virus levels out and goes away due to herd immunity and lack of hosts. This is true of all viruses in history, and we have models created from data after the pandemics from the past 30 years in which to create a model for COVID-19.

But we didn’t. Instead, we took the word of a guy over in England who said 500,000 people were going to die in that country only to reduce his “modeling” by a factor of 50 just a few short weeks later. His excuse? He didn’t take into account “mitigating factors.” What are mitigating factors? Things like, but not limited to, social distancing, new drugs, anecdotal observations from research and the courage and power of the minds of our health care workers who are willing to go to war with a virus and defeat it. Then again, he also didn’t take into account any of the histories of recent pandemics that had dire predictions that came nowhere near becoming true.

My thought: This guy shouldn’t be allowed near the glue required to build a model of a 1964 Mustang, let alone anything to do with the health and life of our planet. What worries me more? Politicians whose mouths are filled with hooks, lines and sinkers who thought nothing of destroying our economy due to one model by this same expert.

Reference back to 1988 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) created by the United Nations. So here we have — again — another panel of experts looking into a global emergency.
In its initial phases, the IPCC asked climate experts from around the world to submit their ideas and models as to why global warming was occurring. All in all, more than 300 theories were floated. Including the obvious one: climate changes. Yet, the IPCC decided only one was worthy of adoption: The one that blamed it on a man with the hockey stick graph. Which, ironically, is the one that gave it the most power.

The IPCC model has morphed several times over the decades. We’re at the point now where we’re being told for the fourth time we only have a certain number of years left, that we’re past the tipping point to stop global warming from wiping out civilization — even though none of the global warming models have come close to predicting what the climate will do.

So here we have another coronavirus outbreak. Kindly note, we have one nearly every year with flu and every few years that are novel. And what model do our leaders jump on board with? You got it, the one predicting disaster. If you don’t think that’s the one with the most power, then you haven’t noticed how our leaders have shuttered about 90 percent of the country — something never done in our history.

All based on a model that’s been adjusted down nearly 40 times in the United States with adjustments every day going down as well to the number of hospital beds, respirators and every other item needed to fight this outbreak. All of which is great news not getting reported, while reports predicting the worst is yet to come in two weeks come every two weeks. At some point, the next worst two weeks has to occur, doesn’t it? Because that’s what every model created AFTER a pandemic shows: an outbreak, a peak, a leveling off and an end.

The sooner we get to that, the sooner we can get back to work — because a business can only stay open so long without customers. And last I checked, a model customer is one with a job.